The True Crime Enthusiast Podcast

Open water is, for many people, their greatest fear, and being trapped within it must be terrifying - especially if you cannot swim to safety, to face your final, mortal moments like that. On a freezing cold March morning back in 2013, in the town of Arklow, in County Wexford, in Ireland, a 31 year old Hungarian national named Csaba Orsos faced exactly his greatest fear.

It was the last thing he was ever to face.

The episod...

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, has since its establishment in 1978 assisted Lebanese forces along the country's border with Israel to maintain peace, security, and ensure humanitarian access. In it's near five decades in existence, countless soldiers from nations across the world have lost their lives as part of these peacekeeping forces, and it is the Irish Army that holds the distinction, to date, of...

He was for many years a folk devil, almost an apparition, whispered about in playgrounds and used as a threat by parents, in the North West of England anyway, to make their chldren behave - 'Purple Aki's gonna get you'. He became an almost Bogeyman, and around the North West of the UK, he has an almost legendary status.

But - he was very, very real, and this time around on the Enthusiast, I bring you the tale of a strange indivi...

I'm thrilled to today be sharing an episode with you from a sister True Crime podcast of the Enthusiast from the Always True Crime Network - Paranormia. Join host Elizabeth McCaffrey as she takes us back to the late 1970, and recounts the tale of one of the most terrifying and disturbing crime cases in American history.

The Vampire Of Sacramento.

New episodes of Paranormia are available each Wednesday, simply search for Paran...

The Justice and Mental Health services in the UK are, as much as they are supposed to for the benefit of the patient concerned, supposed to act dilligently and communicatively in the best interests of the wider public too. One morning in October 2011, 58 year old grandmother of two Sally Hodkin was to find out, in the most tragic of ways, that sometimes, there are failings in these systems...

The episode contains details and des...

I bring the Best Laid Plans story to a conclusion this time around on The True Crime Enthusiast, where we hear the outcome of the trial of Arkan Ali, Aram Kurd and Hawkar Hassan over the explosion which killed Mary, Sean and Shane Ragobeer, Leah Reek, and Viktorija Ijevleva, and what has happened in the intervening years concerning the families of those who lost their lives, as well as the legacies that live on.

The episode con...

It is unamaginable losing a family member in an explosion - let alone three family members - nut in November 2018, that is exactly what Leicester Crown Court heard had happened back in February of that year - as the result of deliberate actions, and three men - Aram Kurd, Hawekar Hassan, and Arkan Ali - faced charges for this. The Crown painted a very clear cut, strong case against the three - but what did they have to say for them...

The horrific explosion in Leicester, on 25th February 2018, which claimed the lives of five people, would have been terrible enough were it a tragic accident - but, what made it much worse, more inhumane, is that by just three days after the blast, police were convinced that it had been a deliberate act, and soon afterwards, charges were raised against three men for this - Arkan Ali, Hawkar Hassan, and Aram Kurd - the store's propr...

The quiet evening of Sunday 25th February 2018 in the Hinckley Road area of the city of Leicester was an unremarkable one - it was a cold night, and families were at home, glad to be in in the warmth.

That quiet was to be disrupted, and the lives of so many people forever changed irreprably, when at 7:01pm, an explosion ripped through the night sky, a blast which claimed the lives of five people. A tragic accident, like so many ...

Love is supposed to be in the air on Valentine’s Day — roses, proposals, appreciation and hearts everywhere you look. It’s supposed to be the most romantic day of the year – but for some people, in the accounts I bring this time around on The True Crime Enthusiast Podcast, February 14th didn’t end with chocolates and kisses, for love wasn’t in the air that day at all for them.

Instead, murder was.

The episode contains details...

Up to the mid 1960’s, capital punishment was in force in the UK for the crime of murder, and many a soul watched in fear as the presiding judge placed the black cap onto his or her head, and pronounced sentence of death upon them. There are countless tales of these to recount, but the tale I bring this time around on the Enthusiast is one of an individual who cheated the hangman for such a capital crime, not once, not twice – but t...

We head back to the 1950’s, and to rural West Wales this time around on The True Crime Enthusiast Podcast, where I bring you an account of a couple who mysteriously disappeared one Friday October evening. Throw in details such as buzzards, traps involving black cotton, conflicting ink, and ever conflicting stories that just didn’t add up no matter what, and you have the tale this time around…

The episode contains details and des...

I round off this Horrors Over The Holidays selection of tales with a senseless story from New Year's Day in 2020, for which we head to the Stockbridge Village area of Merseyside, and for a discovery that no daughter should ever have to face, and a crime that highlights just how evil and tragedy do not respect the holidays, not at all....

The episode contains details and descriptions of crimes and events that some listeners may f...

The Hogmanay Party had been a great success, and returning to his parents home in Milngavie, in East Dunbartonshire, all then 23 year old Cameron Logan and his girlfriend, 25 year old Rebecca Williams could think about in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2017 was having some food, and going to sleep.

Soon after they drifted off to sleep, neither of them saw or heard the dark clad, masked figure stood at the foot of the bed, hol...

The Horrors Over The Holidays: New Year’s Evil this time around takes us back to New Years Eve 2013, and down to the county of Hampshire, to the start of what was planned to be a very ordinary New Year’s Eve party. By early evening, the drink was flowing, and the two identical twin brothers, inseparable in so many things, had sat down to match each other drink for drink.

It was a night that was to change the life of several – an...

Sticking with this Horrors Over The Holidays season of daily tales, I now move onto those tales that take place over the turn of the year, beginning with a tale from North Wales from the early 1990's, and a night of horror that left five people dead, and an equal number of families bearing the scars - and the memories - today.

The episode contains details and descriptions of crimes and events that some listeners may find disturb...

This time around, for the last of the Horrors Over The Holidays to take place this year over the Christmas period, I bring perhaps the most tragic of these tales - the truly awful circumstances that two families lost so much at Christmas time 2018.

The episode contains details and descriptions of crimes and events, involving children, that some listeners may find disturbing or distressing, so discretion is advised whilst liste...

We head back to the Christmas of 1972 for this Horrors Over The Holidays episode, where I account a strange, yet tragic story in which the question is posed - can a house be jinxed, do you think? Or are there more earthly explanations, based on the light of subsequent events...

The episode contains details and descriptions of crimes and events, involving children, that some listeners may find disturbing or distressing, so discre...

The only unsolved tale of this Horrors Over The Holidays season I have curated drops here with a tale of tragedy, cruelty, and an account of a truly horrific ordeal from Christmas 1995 where we meet a 'gentle giant' named Alan Holmes.

His tale, I'm sure, you'll never forget.

The episode contains details and descriptions of crimes and events that some listeners may find disturbing or distressing, so discretion is advised whi...